The Joys of (a) Winter (coat)!

Yes, I am back! I am well aware that a new year is under way and I have been absent in posting for the past three months or so. What can I say except--finals and the holidays happened, and my time was so precious and demanded of me that keeping regularity with these journal entries became difficult.

However today, I was so inspired on a walk home that I felt I just had to write! What inspired this, you ask? Well, I will simply say that it was a -warm- winter coat. Now, don't get me wrong--I have coats--nearly three, to be precise. Yet all these other coats are made out of wool and just don't suffice when the daytime temperatures reach just above freezing. Now, I have been making the best with them--wearing sweaters and layers and long johns and leg warmers--but still, I wasn't what you would call "warm." What is "warm" do you ask? Well, to me--as I discovered today at least--warm is when you don't keep your head tucked into your neck and only look up when necessary. Warm is when you don't always keep your hands in your pockets, or walk as quickly as you can to get to your destination. No--warm is when you can look around, enjoy your surroundings, recognize that it is cold but not be suffering in pain from just how frozen your hands and toes are.

I finally had this today when I pulled out THE BIG winter coat. Not the most fashionable, no--in fact I look like a caramel dipped Michelin Man--but still it is warm. Warm is what counts in cold climates, as I am discovering the more I observe people in my altered state. You can recognize the walk of a cold person (short, hurried strides) and a warm person (more leisurely and lengthy). One huddles and one merely continues on as if it were the other three seasons.

In a warm coat, you can truly appreciate the bright blue of a winter sky, the cold dark forms of black-bottom clouds sailing by. There is a bright harshness to the sun after the solstice, and although weak compared to that of summer, there is something cutting about it so that it changes the edges of buildings into something much sharper, as though you have adjusted the camera lens.

You notice the fat squirrels playing amongst the tombstones, the chirp of birds that have chosen to winter it out--the muted browns, greys, greens and slate blues that all the buildings have been painted with. You see the buds on the trees, waiting resiliently. There is no sign of spring, no sign of life--everything is hunched down, close to the ground, bare and stripped of their winter coats. My god, they look cold--but aren't they beautiful?